Health Secretary Wes Streeting was left visibly moved as two Jewish women employed in the National Health Service (NHS) told him of their experience of antisemitism in the workplace.
The Jewish Chronicle reported in March that the minister said he felt “ashamed” while hearing their testimony at a meeting last month, adding “we have a real problem” in the NHS.
One frontline medical worker from his northeast London constituency who asked not to be named said some paramedics working in Jewish areas were openly antisemitic: “There’s one guy who works out of a station who says he hates Jews.
“He was reported by a colleague who felt so uncomfortable working with him that she moved to a different station. He was given a promotion.
“From 8 October, people were coming into workplaces with cakes in the Palestine colours and putting Palestine flags up.”
She said that an Equality, Diversity Inclusion (EDI) manager had told her that Jews were white and not an ethnicity. In two long training sessions she had sat through on EDI and how to take special care of minority patients, she said Jews had not been mentioned once.
The frontline worker said she had been investigated for her “Zionist beliefs”, including for Instagram posts celebrating Jewish festivals. A black friend who spoke up for her was smeared as a “coconut”, while a supportive Muslim woman was branded a “disgrace to her religion”.
Recalling the mental health toll she suffered, she said she had received calls at 3am from other Jewish NHS staff who were struggling to stay in jobs they loved because of the hate from colleagues. “There are very few people in our Jewish network who haven’t experienced antisemitism. I go into work every morning thinking, ‘What is going to be next?’”
Another constituent of Streeting, an NHS hospital doctor who also asked not to be named, said: “I am too frightened for any of my colleagues to know that I am Jewish.”
She recalled early in her career a senior doctor had asked her about Judaism and said Jews ruled the world. She later tried to hide her identity and had to endure antisemitic comments in the workplace in silence. She said: “I feel like an alien. There is this consistent antisemitism.”
The doctor said she had contemplated emigrating because of the hostility she had endured.
Streeting revealed Jewish patients had told him they were afraid to ask for kosher food in hospital out of concern over how they might be treated once identity was known. Addressing the failure of the authorities to deal with antisemitic NHS staff, he said: “I believe medical regulators have been failing in their duty towards staff and patients.”
The Health Secretary added: “As far as I’m concerned, the NHS should be a place where people leave politics at the door. The overriding duty of the NHS has to be to the patient.”